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SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft Studios head Phil Spencer, who heads up the company's video game production arm, reflected on the Xbox One's controversial always-on policies rolled back last year in an interview with Gamasutra editor in chief Kris Graft on the final day of the Game Developers Conference here Friday.

"We could have been more clear and concise about what our real soul around the product was," Spencer said. Touching on the topic briefly yet apologetically, Spencer outlined how it was a learning experience, but that the blame was deserved because Microsoft fumbled the communication with … Read more

Microsoft defended what it called the "exceptional" step of a "limited review" of a blogger's Hotmail account as part of a larger Windows espionage case, saying it had caught the blogger selling Microsoft's intellectual property without permission.

A court filing alleges that the unnamed blogger had been provided prerelease Windows 8 RT source code by then-Microsoft employee Alex Kibkalo. Kibkalo is being charged with stealing trade secrets.

The filing says that Microsoft triggered an internal investigation into the blogger's actions when the blogger sent the source code to an unnamed person, hoping for … Read more

Microsoft went through a blogger's private Hotmail account in order to trace the identity of a source who allegedly leaked trade secrets.

A March 17 court filing by federal prosecutors reveals that Microsoft's Office of Legal Compliance approved the decision after confirming that the leaked data in question included proprietary Microsoft code.

According to the filing, Microsoft received a tip from a person who was contacted via Hotmail by the blogger, who wanted to verify that the leaked source code was legitimate. Instead, the tipper went to Steven Sinofsky, then-president of the Windows Division at Microsoft, and told … Read more

"Huawei Consumer Business Group adopts an open approach towards mobile operating systems to provide a range of choices for consumers," the company said in its statement. "However, most of our products are based on Android OS, [and] at this stage there are no plans to launch a dual-OS smartphone in the near future."… Read more

Alex Kibkalo, a former senior architect at Microsoft who most recently served as a director of product management in 5nine Software (according to his LinkedIn profile), has been arrested for allegedly stealing Windows-related trade secrets while working for Microsoft.

According to a complaint filed on March 17 in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, Kibkalo -- a Russian national and former Microsoft employee based in Lebanon -- passed on trade secrets involving Windows 8 to an unnamed technology blogger in France.

Xbox 360 owners will need to wait a couple more weeks before they can get their hands on Titanfall.

Titanfall will now launch on the Xbox 360 on April 8 in North America and April 11 in Europe, the game's publisher, Electronic Arts, announced on Wednesday. The title was expected to launch March 25 on the console, but EA said its development team needs a little more time to work out some kinks. Like the Xbox One and PC versions that launched last week, the Xbox 360 offering will include 6-vs-6 gameplay and feature all the same maps, modes, … Read more

Microsoft's crusade against pirated software was bolstered on Tuesday with the release of a study that found stolen programs are going to cause issues this year for both consumers and enterprise customers.

The study, conducted by research firm IDC and the National University of Singapore, found that consumers worldwide will spend $25 billion and collectively waste 1.2 billion hours this year as the result of downloading pirated software. On the business side, companies will spend $500 billion on fixes in 2014 to issues with pirated software.

Although Microsoft didn't work on the study, it was released as … Read more